NADAIR.

NADAIR

Twenty seats, one menu a night, and the menu can change between one night and the next.

Why go

Alan Keery cooks and Sarah Baldry makes the desserts. They are a couple, they first worked together at Wedgwood the Restaurant, and this is the first room either of them has owned.5 The name is Scottish Gaelic for nature, and the foraging runs through the whole service, into the cocktails as well as the plates: the drinks list is built on organic wine and in-house infusions, and the vermouth and the damson gin in the Damson Martini are both made here.8 What the kitchen cooks is modern Scottish crossed with Scandinavian technique, which the trade column states outright and Richard Bath saw the room trumpeting on his own visit.5 It shows in a dish like the salt-baked celeriac, served in a consomme made from the skin of the same vegetable with woodruff, fried brioche and buckwheat. That is a root cooked in salt, then its peelings turned into the broth it sits in, which is the Nordic habit of using the whole thing applied to a Scottish larder. The room seats twenty and is finished bare enough that Gaby Soutar compared it to an art gallery, which puts the whole show on the five courses.1 They opened in August 2024 with minimal publicity while they got up and running, and the awards found them afterwards.6

Order this / avoid

• Order: what you are given. There is no choosing, and the sequence at Soutar's visit ran wheaten bread with smoked crowdie and Jerusalem artichoke, then potatoes, then cod, then lamb, then two desserts.1
• Order: the potato course if the kitchen still runs one. Waxy potatoes cooked in beef fat, buckwheat crackers Soutar found had a crunch as light as popcorn, emulsion and sea truffleweed over the top.1
• Order: the cheese course, a £6.50 supplement as of October 2025. It has taken two forms in the published record, deep-fried Isle of Mull cheddar beignets with truffle honey, and a clootie dumpling under sliced Isle of Mull cheddar with the same honey.8
• Order: the celeriac if the kitchen still runs it. Salt-baked, with a consomme made from its own skin and woodruff, fried brioche and buckwheat.5
• Order: a cocktail before the food. The Damson Martini uses the house vermouth and a damson gin made in the building.8
• Avoid: booking on the assumption the menu will match anything you read online. It changes as often as daily, which is the entire premise.

What locals & experts say

• Richard Bath, Scottish Field (October 2024): the only reviewer in the file who pushes back, and he does it on a dish. The sliced scallop cooked with buttermilk, onion and sweet cicely was a little heavy on the onions, which threatened to overwhelm the light flavours of the scallop. He is also the one who does the arithmetic out loud, calling this yet another new restaurant with a tasting menu that is towards the top end of most diners' financial tolerance, then landing on the food anyway: the cavatelli with chanterelles and black garlic was a superb second dish, and the cheddar beignets disappeared with indecent haste.7
• Gaby Soutar, The Scotsman (December 2024): she filed it as her best dinner of the year and was specific about why. I'm not a huge fan of tasting menus, but this one is perfectly paced, and ticks along efficiently. On the lamb course she recorded her dining partner, who does not eat lamb or goat curd, clearing the plate anyway: He sooked up every last crumb, like a Henry vacuum cleaner during a power surge. The mackerel ketchup alongside it should be sold by the jar.1
• Condé Nast Traveller, quoted in its award citation: More relaxed than your standard tasting menu, Nádair offers one set billing built around Scottish produce, including foraged finds. It named the effect the daily rewriting produces: Because of the staunch seasonal lean (the menu can change daily), there's repetition of flavours throughout dishes that champions the exact moment in time you're dining in, creating a strand of consistency but also creativity throughout the meal.2
• Condé Nast Traveller UK's Top New Restaurant Awards 2025, winner. The second annual edition of the award. The win has not repeated: the third annual list, published in March 2026, names five Scottish rooms and this is not one of them.4
• Eleonora Vanello, Bite Magazine (October 2025), on the question Bath raised: Overall, the menu offers good value for money, matched by attentive and friendly service. Her pick of the night was mushrooms and barley in a roasted yeast sauce.8
• Keery and Baldry, on the award: Winning this award was a total surprise, but we are absolutely delighted that our wee restaurant has been recognised by such an influential travel guide.2

Good to know

• Service: dinner Thursday to Sunday, lunch Saturday and Sunday only. As published in October 2025: Thursday 6pm to 9.15pm, Friday 5.30pm to 9.15pm, Saturday and Sunday noon to 2pm and 5.30pm to 9.15pm.8
• Price: £65 a head for five courses at dinner and £45 for the wine flight, with the cheese course a £6.50 supplement as of October 2025. Richard Bath did the whole-evening math in October 2024: the cheapest bottle at £28 puts dinner for two around £175, and paired wines take it to £250.7
• The cheap way in: weekend lunch, Saturday and Sunday from noon. It was £25 for two courses or £30 for three when Harden's and Scottish Field both published it in autumn 2024, and no more recent figure exists.6
• Booking: essential. Twenty seats and one sitting's worth of food prepped for them.
• Format: no menu choice and no à la carte. Tell them about allergies when you book, because there is nothing to swap to.
• Getting there: 15 Roseneath Street, off Marchmont Road, with the Meadows between the restaurant and the Old Town. It is a fifteen-minute walk home across the grass.
• Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 19 March 2026, with no re-inspection pending. Current information.9

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: "CN UK top list 1025"
• On the note: the body and the list check out. Condé Nast Traveller, UK's Top New Restaurant Awards, and this is the only Edinburgh room on it. Two press reports pin it to the second annual edition, announced 11 March 2025.

Verdict

should-visit — RUNG DID NOT MOVE. should-visit in all three rounds, and this time it is held on evidence rather than on the benefit of the doubt. The single objection round 2 raised was that one critic, twenty months old, was carrying the whole room. That objection is now answered from two directions. Richard Bath reviewed this kitchen for Scottish Field on 14 October 2024 and he is a registered critic in this repo, which makes him the second bylined verdict and the first one that argues: the scallop 'was a little heavy on the onions, which threatened to overwhelm the light flavours of the scallop', and he opens the price question out loud, calling it 'yet another new restaurant with a tasting menu that is towards the top end of most diners' financial tolerance'. He lands positive anyway, on specifics: the cavatelli with chanterelles and black garlic was 'a superb second dish', the Mull cheddar beignets 'disappeared with indecent haste', and the whole thing 'a really solid meal'. Eleonora Vanello's Bite review of 27 October 2025 is the third, it is nine months old rather than twenty, and it prints a plate list from a kitchen that has kept moving: rump cap tartare with lovage, crab under a Hong Kong XO sauce, mushrooms and barley in roasted yeast sauce, venison with pumpkin and blaeberries, a clootie dumpling under Isle of Mull cheddar and truffle honey. Three independent bylined accounts across thirteen months, all positive, one of them properly critical, is a real record for a twenty-seat room. It is still not must-visit and the reason is unchanged and structural. Nobody has written a career dish here. Bath's own summary word is 'solid'. The Conde Nast Traveller win is the 2025 edition and it did not repeat on the 2026 list, Michelin carries the venue in no status against all 43 rows of the 2026 Edinburgh cards, and what is being described is a well-made modern Scottish set menu in a lane Scotland currently has several rooms in. That is a detour, not a trip built around it.